Category History

What was Nurjahan known as before she married Jahangir?

Nur Jahan (1575-1645) whose original name was Mihr-un-Nisa, was the daughter of Mirza Ghiyas Beg who belonged to a noble family of Persia. Evil days fell upon him and he had to leave his native place and in search of fortune he moved towards India. When he reached Qandhar, his wife gave birth to a daughter who later on became the most beloved queen of emperor Jahangir. With the help of a friend, he was able to get some job during Akbar’s time. On account of his talents, he gained importance in the court.

Nur Jahan was a cultured educated, intelligent and dominating lady. She was fond of music, painting and poetry. She composed verses in Persian. She designed new varieties of cotton and silk fabrics. She suggested models of jewellery. Thus she set the fashions of the age. About Nur Jahans’ influence over Jahangir, Dr. Beni Prasad has observed “Nur Jahan ruled him (Jahangir) for fourteen years and during the last five years of his reign, Nur Jahan alone controlled him.”

 

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How did the Mughals treat women?

The origin

When Babur, the first Mughal emperor came thundering into India, he brought his ‘haraman’, his household with him, including wives, children, mothers, grandmothers, elderly widowed aunts, unmarried relatives and so on. These Turki women were hardy – they lived in tents, rode on horseback accompanying the army and mingled with everyone, and indeed, matriarchs were greatly respected and looked to for advice.

However, during Akbar’s long, stable reign, the concept of a physically separate, private place for Mughal royal ladies started. As Akbar made a great many marriage alliances with the Rajput princesses in his endeavour to get the support of their fathers, his household exploded in size, since each princess would come to him with a large number of attendants to keep her company.

A Glided Cage

An enclosed area of the royal compound called the harem, mahal or zenana became the world of Mughal women. Over time, the separation became complete. Mughal royal ladies started observing full purdah (meaning ‘curtain’ in Persian) – it became utterly shameful for them to see or be seen by any unrelated man who wasn’t the emperor himself. The zenana was soon heavily-guarded – not by men, but by eunuchs. On the rare occasion that the royal ladies had to venture outside, it was under heavy veils and in closely covered palanquins. If an unrelated man was found trying to enter this sacrosanct space, he could (and often would) be put to death straight away!

Inside this royal bubble and the mahal, life was totally different, where the women could walk around freely, unveiled. Thousands of women lived their entire lives in this luxurious, opulent, gilded cage. In addition to the many official wives of the emperor, were hundreds of ‘semi-official’ ones, as well as grandmothers, step-mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, nieces and so on. Children were brought up in the harem, until the boys had to move out in their teenage years.

It was an entire world of its own, where the Mughal Emperor was the sun around which the women revolved. He could enter his harem whenever he pleased. The harem is where the Emperor went for privacy and relaxation. It is where he would take his meals, and where he would read his private documents.

Zenana Shenanigans

Life in the zenana was a bustling hive of activity and intrigue. Each lady had a personal allowance, and female slaves and servants hovered around to tend to every need. Royal karkhanas were set up just to make the finest muslin dresses for them, and royal jewelers did the rounds to fashion the most exquisite jewellery.

The ladies were educated, and many became patrons of culture – music, art and literature. They influenced fashions at the court. Some were writers and poets like Salima Sultana, Jahanara, and Aurangzeb’s daughter Zebunissa. Chess, a Mughal obsession, was as fiercely played inside the harem as at court.

Eager Europeans

European visitors to the Mughal court were both shocked and very curious about this setup which seemed very exotic to them.

European visitors were most curious to see the zenana for themselves but were not allowed anywhere close to it due to the heavy shroud of secrecy surrounding it.

Bernier, a French doctor, speaks of his attempts to get into the harem. “I have sometimes gone into it when the King was absent from Delhi, for the purpose of giving my professional advice when a great lady was so ill she could not be moved. A cashmere shawl covered my head, hanging like a scarf down to my feet, and a eunuch led me by hand as if I had been a blind man.”

Mostly they had to rely on hearsay from the eunuchs who served in the harem. “The apartments of the queens are magnificent; and whatever can contribute either to conscience or pleasure has been consulted in their arrangement. It may be said, that the ardour of a burning climate is never experienced in these abodes. Here are to be seen running streams, shadowy groves, fountains, and subterraneous grottos for securing the enjoyment of a delicious coolness.”

Meena Bazaar

Akbar started an annual event in the mahal that was carried on by all future emperors. The Meena Bazaar was a yearly fair held during the lavishly celebrated Parsi Navroz festivities, where instead of regular shopkeepers, the royal ladies and the wives of Mughal nobles would set up stalls to set luxuries and exotic items. The only made customer allowed in was the Emperor himself!

A French account says, “A whimsical kind of fair is held in the Mehale, conducted by the handsomest wives of the Omrahs…these bewitching females act the part of traders, while the purchases are the King, the Begums or the Princesses of the harem”. But to give an idea of how some nobility really felt about it: when Akbar was negotiating with a Rajput king, one of the conditions for the Rana’s surrender was that his women would be exempt from attending the Meena Bazaar!

Powerful Princesses

Royal Mughal Princesses would usually remain unmarried and spend their whole lives in the zenana. However, they could have enormous influence, and would ofen watch what was happening at court from behind intricate latticed screens and give their opinions to the emperors. Some also issued farmans (edicts). For instance, Jahanara was the great favourite of her father Shah Jahan and her brother Dara Shikoh. Her sister Roshanara on the other hand, was on Aurangzeb’s side and would spy on the harem and send him letters about what was happening. Jahangir’s wife Noorjahan practically ran the massive Mughal empire in his name for 15 years.

The mahal was a thriving hotbed of politics all around. Each royal lady would intrigue to become more powerful and influential than the next, and everyone competed to get the Emperor’s ear.’ There were quite as many plots and spies and treachery as in the Mughal court.

 

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What is the origin of Pie?

It is a round dish with a crumbly crust filled with jam and jelly. Among the fillings, the apple stuffing is supposed to be the best. In the U.S., the pie is served as dessert during the Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts. But the pies we eat today have a short history, though people have been baking dough filled with stuff for a very long time. According to Time.com, in medieval England they were called pyes, and apart from the sweet fillings, they also had meat –beef, lamb, wild duck, magpie pigeon – and were spiced with pepper, currants, dates. Historians say ancient Greeks made the first pie-shells by mixing flour and water. Wealthy Romans used many kinds of meat – from even mussels and other sea creatures in their pies. Cato the Younger (scribe) recorded the popularity of the sweet pie as a dessert in Roman meals.

In 1621, people (the Pilgrims) crossed the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the New World of America. They carried salty meat pies with them to the colonies in America. The pumpkin pie, now a must-have during the Thanksgiving feast, was first recorded in a cook-book in 1675. The British made this pie with squash, and the American version with red pumpkin became popular in the 1800s. The colonists cooked many types of pies. With their crusty covers, pies were preserved food, and kept their fillings fresh in the winter months. Documents show that the Pilgrims used dried fruit, cinnamon, pepper and nutmeg to season their meats. A cookbook from 1796 mentioned only three types of sweet pies; a cookbook written in the late 1800s had 8 sweet-pie varieties; in 1947, Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking listed 65 different varieties of sweet pies. The original pie had a shell that could not be eaten, and the apples did not have added sugar. The apple pie was mentioned first in 1589 by poet R Greene in the poem Menaphon: “They breath is like the steeme of apple pies.” Pies today are eaten the World over, and have all kinds of stuffing – from apples to avocados.

 

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Who were the inklings?

The Inklings were an informal literary group in Oxford that started in the early 1930s. They continued meeting till the 1950s.

Most of the Inklings were academics at the University of Oxford and many of them were creative writers. The Inklings valued creative imagination and encouraged one another to write fantasy literature.

The most important members of the group were C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams. Three were writers of fantasy fiction. C.S. Lewis authored the much loved classic children’s book series The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56). Tolkien is the author of The Hobbit (1938) and the famous trilogy The Lord of the Rings (1955-56). Charles Williams was an editor at Oxford University Press while Barfield was a poet.

The main activity of the Inklings at their meetings was the reading and discussion of their unfinished writings. Tolkien first read The Lord of the Rings to the Inklings. He described the spirit of the meetings as ‘a feast of reason and flow of soul’

Christian values are reflected in the fantasy works of many of the Inklings authors. Both The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings have Christian themes. However, the Inklings included some non-Christians too.

The term ‘Inklings’ was a pun on these who dabble in ink i.e. writers. It also refers to those who may be having only an inkling of what they are going to write about when they start a story.

 

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What are pet rocks?

In April 1975, an American Gary Dahl told his friends that he had the perfect pet. It required no maintenance, was cheap and always obedient. Dahl was referring to his pet rock! He meant it as a joke, but his advertising colleagues jumped on the idea. As if to prove the fact that Americans would buy anything if it was marketed cleverly, pet rocks became a fad!

Dahl wrote The Pet Training Manual in two weeks. It guided owners on how to  house – train and build a rapport with their rocks. They could teach the rock tricks such as how to play dead and roll over.

Dahl then created a pet rock to go with the manual. He bought a Rosarita Beach Stone, a round gray pebble that was the most expensive one in the builders’ supply store. He packed it in soft wood shavings inside a decorative pet carrying case and added the manual. Amazingly, more than 5 million Pet Rocks were sold all over the U.S. at $3.95 apiece. Originally, the Pet Rocks were plain, but Dahl added to the line, creating rocks with faces painted on them, birth certificates and even several pebbles sold together as a family.

Before the fad petered out, Dahl became an overnight millionaire and celebrity, appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

 

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Which style of Buddhist sculpture originated in North West India?

Gandhara art, style of Buddhist visual art that developed in what is now northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan between the 1st century BCE and the 7th century CE. The style, of Greco-Roman origin, seems to have flourished largely during the Kushan dynasty and was contemporaneous with an important but dissimilar school of Kushan art at Mathura (Uttar Pradesh, India).

The materials used for Gandhara sculpture were green phyllite and gray-blue mica schist which in general, belong to an earlier phase, and stucco, which was used increasingly after the 3rd century CE. The sculptures were originally painted and gilded.

Gandhara’s role in the evolution of the Buddha image has been a point of considerable disagreement among scholars. It now seems clear that the schools of Gandhara and Mathura each independently evolved its own characteristic depiction of the Buddha about the 1st century CE. The Gandhara School drew upon the anthropomorphic traditions of Roman religion and represented the Buddha with a youthful Apollo-like face, dressed in garments resembling those seen on Roman imperial statues. 

 

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